The learning of a 20 item CVC list by serial anticipation of Ss receiving a 30 min training session in a commercial mnemonic technique known as the “hook” or “peg” system was compared with the performance of untrained Ss. Trained Ss performed significantly better, with respect to number of correct anticipations, than did untrained Ss receiving the same trigrams. Trained Ss who learned high (100%) association trigrams exhibited a distortion of the classical serial position effect.